Abstract #3120

Pan W, Lei H, Yang C, Wu G, Jiang T, Sun J

Previous studies have demonstrated that the cortices of congenital and early blind (EB) show striking functional plasticity. In this study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis was performed in 8 Chinese EB subjects and 11 controls to investigate the anatomical changes, if any, in the brain of the EB subjects, presumably resulted from development-related and learning-induced plasticity after early sensory deprivation and long-term living in an environment with no visual input. The results show that, relative to the controls, the EB subjects showed decreased white matter volumes in bilateral optic radiation and reduced gray matter volumes in bilateral primary sensorimoter areas.